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The Difference by Scott Page

How much time and money is spent seeking “diversity” in our organizations around the world? How much value comes out of these activities?

My answers to those questions are a lot of money and very little .

Now before you think this is going to a political rant, let me assure you that the book we are discussing here, The Difference, by University of Michigan professor Scott Page, is all for diversity, but of a specific kind. Cognitive Diversity is what he is advocating, and he makes a very strong argument for it.

Many of our efforts to be diverse, based on race, gender, age, or some other broad stroke often miss the mark in producing better decisions and outcomes. Page believes that, when “solving a problem, cognitive diversity can trump ability, and when making a prediction diversity matters as much as ability” Taken seriously, this is quite an inflammatory statement.

Cognitive diversity is based on the “toolbox” each one of us carries with us, built from our individual experiences and education and trainings. Specifically the toolbox contains four “tools”: perspectives, heuristics, interpretations, and predictive models that we all use every day in every way. All of us have these tools in differing proportions and we all use them somewhat differently. When an organization manages to build teams emphasizing this type of diversity, desired outcomes – better decisions and better innovations – are far more likely.

This is a difficult book to read, despite the author’s humor and clear writing. It is a serious work of social science and an important work for anyone interested in how to better exploit organizational knowledge, using much more sophisticated methods than the very crude and ineffective tools we currently use.